Nobody wants to talk about the pandemic

But what are we still grieving?

Sunday marks five years since I lost my dad to COVID-19—a “milestone” that feels hard to believe, particularly when the world often acts as if the pandemic is no more than a distant memory. This post explores that dissonance, so naturally I touch on some heavy topics, like grief, trauma, and the virus itself. Go easy/close the tab if they might be tricky for you right now. Equally, I’m here if any of this resonates and you’d like to chat 💜

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I recently took a course on coaching in the presence of trauma. In the last lecture, the speaker asked us to write yes in the chat box if we had ever experienced trauma.

Many yeses fluttered onto the screen. Meanwhile, I sat on my hands. I couldn’t bring myself to join in—to claim “my trauma”.

I imagined that the stories behind these yeses were far worse than mine. Abuse, neglect, war, violence, oppression. My life has been positively idyllic in comparison. Apart from some heartbreak here and there. And losing my dad to COVID.

But here I am, still standing, mostly stable. Do my losses count as trauma? What, when we’re trying to take mental health seriously, without taking ourselves too seriously (a very British conundrum), even is trauma?

What is trauma?

Now I’ve heard a lot of different perspectives, I think this is one of the most helpful: put simply, trauma is an inability to distinguish between past and present.

Whether it’s from a single event (acute trauma), prolonged exposure to stress or traumatic events (chronic), or a mix of lots of different things (complex), our bodies, to quote Bessel van der Kolk, keep the score. Impervious to rational thinking, they respond and behave in ways that don’t quite add up, that aren’t always proportionate to reality, as if the traumatic event is still happening. Although trauma is not really the event itself—it’s all the coping mechanisms we develop afterwards, which can both keep us alive and cause great suffering.

In its most extreme form (PTSD), trauma can look like veterans having vivid flashbacks and night terrors. But it could also be:

• An autoimmune disease doctors are baffled by, but might be attributed to a lifetime of stress, caretaking, and people pleasing.

• The way your voice catches and your palms sweat when you have to work with someone who reminds you of an old boss who made your life hell.

• How your mind replays a breakup over and over again, desperately trying to find answers to the past, rather than living in the present.

If the course on trauma taught me anything, it’s that everyone probably has it. So why didn’t I write yes in the chat box?

My pandemic

I remember when my dad called me to tell me he’d tested positive for COVID-19. To many of us, this means a couple of lines on a white stick, a few days at home.

But this was right at the beginning of the pandemic—before we knew the extent to which this mysterious virus would change our lives—and my dad was already in hospital with ongoing complications from his type 1 diabetes.

Still, when he asked me if I was sitting down, I thought he was being a bit melodramatic.

I wish I could write a long, detailed account of the weeks and months that followed. I imagine it would be cathartic and healing. But I can’t (or perhaps I can’t bring myself to) really remember. I read other people’s grief memoirs and marvel at how dialogue is reported so precisely, how descriptions are rendered so crisp.

Whereas my pandemic passed in a blur. Time dilating, too strange and slippery for narrative order.

I only remember snatches. A visit to the hospital before they barred us, peering in at my father’s weirdly small body though the meshed glass of the door to his room. The nurse tending to him in a hazmat suit. The childlike posters we made to send him messages through the windows of the ICU. Having to compose goodbyes for the doctors to read at his bedside when we knew he wouldn’t make it.

It’s difficult to publish those sentences. They feel raw and personal, forcing me to confront my own grief—but also, embarrassment. How does one write grief, without succumbing to trauma porn—to self-pity? And how does one write about something that most people (understandably) would rather not talk about?

The elephant in the room

When it comes to how we we acknowledge the ongoing complications of the pandemic, nobody wants to write yes in the chat box.

This is a generalisation, I know. Possibly even a projection. But it seems to me that the further away we move from the pandemic, the more unwieldy and awkward a topic it becomes in everyday, "polite" conversation.

In some ways, I’m grateful that people have stopped asking “So, what was the pandemic like for you?” I vividly remember interviewing for a job in 2020, a few months after my dad had died, and the founder asking me how I’d been using my lockdown “productively”. You should have seen her face when I told her.

At the same time, maybe we should still be asking…as long as we’re prepared for the honest answer.

These days, the pandemic is something we prefer to skirt around, rather than address directly. It creeps to the surface by way of faintly bemused recollections or bad jokes (Zoom quizzes, peeing in bushes, banana bread, etc.). A brief moment of awestruck silence as we reflect on the absurdity of it all. Before we swiftly move on—thank god that’s all in the past, eh?

And even though insensitive remarks from people who don’t know about my pandemic (and even those who do) can make my blood boil, I’m just as guilty of the banana bread script—after all, what else do we have?

Denial

I coach people who are feeling lost in their careers. It’s interesting when and how the pandemic floats to the surface of our conversations—always a few sessions in (maybe even after several months of working together), often referenced in almost confessional tones.

Whether COVID stole a person, your youth, your sense of purpose, or your confidence, talking about the pandemic can feel like a taboo. There’s a sense of guilt and shame that we should have moved on.

On an individual level, we don’t want to be the party pooper—everything has returned back to normal! Of course we’re grateful!

On a wider level, it can feel like Society™️ would like to pretend COVID never happened—from corporations marching their employees back into the office, to the alarming rise of individualism in our politics. Speaking of which, we have some pretty big fish to fry right now—who has the time, energy or patience to mourn the past, when there’s so much to worry about in the present?

While I don’t subscribe to five chronological stages of grief, I have to admit that it smells like denial—an understandable, very human trauma response. Because I know from my own grief that it’s often far easier to swallow pain than to try to find the language to voice it.

Scriptlessness

In psychology, the term scriptlessness is used to describe the difficulties people experience when they don’t have a clear social script for a situation.

Usually, it’s used in the context of unrequited love, where both rejectors and rejectees can feel confused about what to do with their emotions and how to communicate them (ghosting is a form of scriptlessness).

Maybe scriptlessness is a fitting way to describe how many of us are still feeling lost, adrift or bereft post-pandemic—like we’ve never quite recovered our former lives or selves.

How we are living with the knowing that things have fundamentally changed, while the world continues to hurtle along around us. How we are living with a sense of loss that we may not be able to name.

Not the event itself, but what happens after

Kids often fall over in the playground, scraping the skin off their knees. But if they are given the space to sob and scream, if they are held and have their wounds tended to, they’ll forget it fairly quickly.

As adults, we may go through something difficult, but if we have the right support system in place, if we properly tend to our wounds, we are more resourced to bounce back. In many ways, lockdown allowed me to fully tend to my wounds, to properly mourn my father. But that’s my individual trauma—what about the collective one?

I know that some of us (including me) made big, positive changes in our lives post-pandemic. We probably all appreciate nature and health and loved ones a bit more. We now know how to rear a sourdough starter.

But I also wonder how many are suffering in silence. Maybe still crippled by social anxiety or fearful of public transport. Feeling directionless or lacking purpose at work, unable to shake the fact that none of this really matters. Locked into marriages and mortgages that seemed sensible when there was nothing else to do, but aren’t quite right anymore.

I’m curious about how we give ourselves that script. The permission to say, You know what? That was really hard, and maybe I’m not quite over it. How we begin to process and reconstruct the narrative. How we overcome this pervasive, pernicious old way of doing things—a world run by greed, violence, and a handful of manchildren—and finally learn the lessons the pandemic taught us:

That the world can change overnight if we want it to. That we can make huge sacrifices to keep each other safe. That we can be “productive” without killing ourselves. That love and health are the most important things we have.

I’m starting by asking myself some questions—to write my own story of these past five years, and reflect on the tragedy, the beauty, and even the comedy of it all. If you feel called to journal or reflect on them too, I’d love to hear from you.

What path could my life have taken if the pandemic had not happened?

What would I have lost or gained on this path?

What do I need to mourn? How can I let myself do this?

How does this change how I see my life today?

What feels important?

How could this shape the path ahead?

Thank you for reading.
Lucia x

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About me + Messy Work

If you’re new here, it’s lovely to have you. I’m Lucia, a writer and coach trying to answer some big questions about whether there’s more to life—and respecting the messiness along the way.

If this post has resonated with you, you’re writing about similar themes, or you’re curious about coaching, drop me a message. I’m always up for a chat 🙂